Windows Mail problems: Address book (Contacts)

I was helping out a friend with a problem with Windows Mail on her Vista system. She was not familiar with distribution lists (groups), so I said I would help her.. however, I am a bit stumped.

I created a group and proceeded to add some contacts from her contact list. When done, we tried to send an email to the list, and it aborted saying there was an invalid address. We removed that address, and tried again, and again it aborted. I find it strange that the email would not be sent at all to all the other entries in the list.. with other email programs I have used send the email, if the email address is bad, it get bounced back to me - all the others in the list receive it. Here we have a case were the email was not sent at all to any of the recipients in the list. Is this normal behaviour for Windows Mail? Or is there something wrong with my list?

Another strange problem we noticed is that sometimes the auto-complete does not work for email addresses. Normally, if I enter the letter 'a' in the TO field, I get a drop down menu of all the contacts starting with 'a' in the contact list. This is not working: only some of the contacts are displayed while others that I know are in the contacts address book do not display. Nor will they auto-complete if I type their name. I think this problem may be related to the first one, where email addresses are being rejected.

And finally, she was complaining that her name was spelled incorrectly when she sent mail to recipients. I tested this and sure enough, it was spelled incorrectly in the FROM field. I checked her account settings and her address book, and in both locations it was spelled correctly. Where else could this misspelling be coming from?

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated by both of us! Thanks!!

You fail to mention what e-mail system she's using, outlook, live, Hotmail?
I know my wife's Outlook Web App doesn't show a person's e-mail address in the auto-complete until it's been used at least once. This has also been a problem because when we add new people to an existing contact list, the old contact list will be used via auto-complete.

The user's name spelling Should come from the setup options, but we'll need more info to go any further.

Hi JackSprat, these Mail Tips.pdf also apply in Windows Mail on Vista.

Thanks.. But I believe this PDF applies to Windows Live Mail... Not Windows Mail. Not sure how mich difference there is between the two. Also, this doc seems to apply to adding accounts to WLM... I am more interested in 'fixing' her account, than setting up a new one.

Thanks for the reply. I read it and I pretty well discovered that myself. My main problem is that even though I add a contact (or group), it seems that the program is using a different address book, as some contacts are not in the list. Is it possible there are two address books in use? If so, how do I go about finding them?

I am beginning to think it may be better to migrate her to Windows Live Mail, but need to be assured that I get ALL her contacts exported. And then, of course, there is the problem of all her existing mail folders.. I wonder if there is an migration tool to go from Windows Mail to Windows Live Mail?

I don't use Windows Mail although severl users here prefer it over Windows Live Mail so I don't have an answer for other address books unless it is also using the Windows Address Book (.wab) like Outlook Express.

Thanks.. But I believe this PDF applies to Windows Live Mail... Not Windows Mail. Not sure how mich difference there is between the two. Also, this doc seems to apply to adding accounts to WLM... I am more interested in 'fixing' her account, than setting up a new one.

The same method in my pdf worked perfectly for me in Windows Mail running Vista, before I upgraded to Win7.